Education politics in New York City is often controlled by well-connected lobbyists, wealthy benefactors and crisis communications professionals.

But recently, the most prominent — and sometimes most effective — movements for change in the nation’s largest school system have been created and fueled by those with the most at stake: students.

A new crop of student groups, led by highly organized teenagers who have staged major rallies and protests, have helped define a swirling citywide debate about how race and class exclude vulnerable students from accessing all city schools have to offer.

Here’s how six teenagers with different backgrounds, political viewpoints and public school experiences are working to change a public school system of 1.1 million students and 1,800 schools — along with some of the city’s most prestigious private schools.

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“No one talks about racism in the school, but it’s definitely there,” said Chassidy Titley, a senior at Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx.CreditBrittainy Newman/The New York Times

Protesting Discrimination in Elite Private Schools

Chassidy Titley, 17, Harlem

Chassidy wasn’t nervous about getting in trouble when she and her classmates locked themselves in a building at her prestigious Riverdale private school, sleeping on an air mattress in her principal’s office for three nights in a row.

She was only worried that her group, Students of Color Matter, would be ignored in their fight against what they believe is a racist school culture at Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx.

Chassidy was in charge of managing the group’s Instagram account and coordinating with the news media. Fieldston’s principal eventually agreed to most of the students’ demands, including racial bias training for staff and more classes about nonwhite cultures.

Now, Chassidy wants to help black and Hispanic students at other elite, mostly white schools push for changes.

“There needs to be a standard across private schools for students of color and the history they are taught,” she said. “Every private school should be progressive.”

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“Those who have the privilege to change the system should definitely try,” said Toby Paperno, a junior at Beacon High School in Manhattan.CreditBrittainy Newman/The New York Times

Challenging City’s Handling of School Segregation

Toby Paperno, 16, Park Slope, Brooklyn

A year ago, Toby was busy in the way most high school students are busy. “I was playing Frisbee, I was in a band that was in kind of a lull, I was just hanging out with my friends,” he said.

Then his mother, an integration activist, told him about a group called Teens Take Charge and Toby decided to drop by a meeting. Now, Toby spends his time organizing protests challenging Mr. de Blasio’s handling of the city’s segregated public school district.

He has met with the city schools chancellor, Richard A. Carranza, and personally asked him to move faster on desegregation policies. Earlier this summer, Toby sat among a large group of parents and students who had sorted themselves by race under an unfurled banner reading “de Blasio’s school system.”

Getting involved with the push for integration has made Toby think differently about his own public school experience.

Toby attended a mostly white elementary school in his neighborhood and hung out mostly with white students even in his more integrated middle school. The other student activists in his pro-integration group, Teens Take Charge, make up his first diverse group of friends.

When Toby first arrived at the competitive Beacon High School in Manhattan, which requires high grades for entry, he remembered being awed by the large library and the sparkling dance studios. Now, as a rising junior, Toby looks at the incoming freshmen classes, which to him look increasingly white, with frustration.

“I know I’m contributing to that system in a way by going to this school,” he said.

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“Every time I go to a rally, I say it’s not Alliyah Logan in the room, it’s the Bronx in the room,” said Ms. Logan, a senior at NYC iSchool.CreditBrittainy Newman/The New York Times

Questioning the Role of Police in Schools

Alliyah Logan, 17, East Bronx

As a child, Alliyah knew she did not want to go to high school anywhere near where she lived.

Her older brother attended a school nearby, and she heard about having to pass through metal detectors to get into the building, and being eyed by the police that were posted outside the school. Alliyah was relieved to get into a high school in SoHo, one of the city’s glitziest and whitest neighborhoods, but soon began to feel alienated by the distance.

“It’s really sad that I have to travel an hour and a half from where I live to get the environment I wanted in school,” she said.

About two years ago, Alliyah found a way to bridge the gap.

Alliyah started joining protests and rallies as part of the New York Civil Liberties Union’s youth activism program. She still thinks about the rush she felt after one of the first protests she attended, a Black Lives Matter rally.

She wants her friends back in the Bronx to experience fewer arrests and suspensions in schools, for their metal detectors to be removed and for them to stop having to face police officers in schools.

“I want to make sure I’m equipping people in my community who don’t have an opportunity to go to schools in Manhattan,” Alliyah said.

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“I didn’t want to feel like I was sitting back and watching things happen,” said Stephanie Pacheco, a junior at Manhattan Center For Science and Mathematics in East Harlem.CreditBrittainy Newman/The New York Times

Fighting for Fairer High School Admissions

Stephanie Pacheco, 15, South Bronx

Stephanie is beginning to understand why she ended up in a high school she never wanted to attend.

She loved going to school and had solid grades, so Stephanie imagined she’d land at one of her dream schools.

But she consulted a hulking high school directory that had incorrect or outdated information. Home was not a peaceful place to get work done, and Stephanie found herself finishing schoolwork and applications in public libraries that always seemed to close too early. She discovered that other students had been studying for the high-stakes specialized high school entrance exam for months before she even found out the schools existed.

“It was so frustrating for me to realize how easy it was to make uninformed decisions,” Stephanie said.

Now, at Teens Take Charge, Stephanie is fighting for what she believes will be a fairer high school admissions process.

Segregation, she said, “is a barrier, no matter how smart you are, no matter how much work you put in.”

Her goal for the next year is to expand the conversation about school segregation beyond progressive pockets of Manhattan and Brooklyn and into her own neighborhood, where she sometimes encounters skepticism about the prospect of more white students coming to school in the Bronx.

“It’s about time that the Bronx starts prospering,” she said.

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“I know that nothing’s going to change if I’m doing nothing,” said Vicki Zheng, a junior at Bronx High School of Science.CreditBrittainy Newman/The New York Times

Calling for Asian Representation in Clubs and Classes

Vicki Zheng, 15, Lower East Side

The night before the deadline to create new student clubs at the Bronx High School of Science, Vicki was in a bind.

No teachers had agreed to advise her nascent group, the Asian-American Association, and time was running out. So Vicki found the email addresses of every teacher, administrator and even security guard at the famed specialized school and asked all of them to help out.

As soon as she hit the “send” button, Vicki realized she had forgotten to blind-copy the list of about one hundred names.

It was worth it: one teacher agreed to supervise the group. Now, as president of the club, Vicki said she wants her school’s administration to consider ethnic studies classes focused on Asian-American history and culture, and to talk with classmates about the model minority myth and discrimination.

She also wants to talk about one of the most polarizing issues in New York politics: Mr. de Blasio’s push to eliminate the entrance exam for specialized schools and replace it with a system that would enroll top performers from city middle schools. The mayor’s plan would boost black and Hispanic enrollment in the schools, but cut the number of seats available to Asian-Americans.

“I felt like it was unfair what de Blasio was doing,” said Vicki, who testified against the mayor’s plan at rallies and public hearings. But she says the elite schools are far from perfect, and wants them to look more like the city she lives in.

“I think the specialized schools are really overrated,” she said.

And she wants the schools to be more diverse: “Personally, I’ve never really experienced that,” she said.

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“I feel like my community as a whole has been in awe of what I’ve been able to do,” said Obrian Rosario, a senior at Brooklyn Technical High School.CreditBrittainy Newman/The New York Times

Pushing for Expanded Access to Specialized Schools

Obrian Rosario, 17, Corona, Queens

Obrian was used to traveling long distances to get to high-performing schools when he first started to learn about New York’s school segregation problem.

In middle school, he rode a bus 45 minutes each way to attend a gifted and talented program across the borough in Glendale, Queens. Now, he commutes even longer to get to Brooklyn Technical High School, one of the city’s most elite public high schools.

After he joined the group IntegrateNYC, Obrian realized that his long commutes were a symptom of a much larger problem.

He has since joined a lawsuit to protect Mr. de Blasio’s plan to expand access to so-called specialized schools like Brooklyn Tech through a program called Discovery, and is fighting for citywide desegregation policies and changes to the specialized school admissions process.

“The question is not, is integration going to happen, it’s how it is going to happen, and are we going to slack off like we did 55 years ago?” Obrian said. “I feel like we’re in a new age, there’s a wave of youth activism, we’re going to see it through this time.”

Eliza Shapiro is a reporter covering New York City education. She joined The Times in 2018. Eliza grew up in New York City and attended public and private schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn. @elizashapiro

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 23 of the New York edition with the headline: Change From Within: City’s Students Are on the Front Lines. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe